Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

Case clerk: TBD Drafting arbitrator: TBD

Case opened on 14:00, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
Case closed on 20:50, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist all case (and talk) pages: Front, Ev., Wshp., PD.

Once the case is closed, editors should edit the #Enforcement log as needed, but the other content of this page may not be edited except by clerks or arbitrators. Please raise any questions about this decision at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment, any general questions at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee, and report violations of the remedies passed in the decision to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement.

Case information

Involved parties

PhantomTech (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
Technical 13 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Prior dispute resolution

Preliminary statements

Statement by PhantomTech

Technical 13 has a history of permission removals and temporary blocks resulting from problematic behavior. Continued problematic behavior indicates that past remedies have not been effective and that more severe remedies are required. The most recent AN/I thread resulted in no action with almost all who opposed claiming that the problems brought up were not serious or that T13's work makes up for the problems, these users made up about half of those who responded while the other half encouraged the situation to be looked into but did not seem to want to get too involved. This lack of a willingness to get involved that many editors, for whatever reason, seem to have is why I think the arbitration committee should get involved in this investigation of T13's behavior. Some example of past behavior include inappropriate attempts to sway the opinions of editors [1] [2] and failure to admit fault or change behavior pointed out to him [3]. Pointing out problems to T13 seems to be useless as several instances, that I'm aware of, of problematic behavior have occurred in the 3 weeks since the most recent AN/I thread was posted:

A personal attack against editors, calling them "project dictators"
Here T13 claims to have had no knowledge of the job queue issues while making the contested changes but that he should not revert those changes because he is now aware of the job queue issues and here he proves that he knew about the issue before making the contested changes changes to that template
Here T13 violates canvassing policy by modifying his script to notify its users of a discussion where they would have a bias.
Here, in part of a longer interaction with a specific IP filled with more WP:IPHUMAN issues, T13 claims he cannot start a discussion on an IPs talk page unless they register an account
In another breach of canvassing policy and a disruption to recent changes patrol, T13 began sending out what would have been well over a thousand posts to notify people of a discussion on a humor page until eventually stopping after a talk page message, only to claim he did nothing wrong while quoting the exact part of the policy he violated
In another reply to the above, he claims that the hudreds of messages he sent were not "too many", wikilawyers saying that he is not a bot which is technically true but at 20+ edits per minute with AWB is effectively no different and, finally, in what appears to be pointy behavior, he implies that what he did was better than an RfC since any notices from an RfC would have been posted by a bot

PHANTOMTECH (talk) 00:51, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Extended content

Request to ArbCom

Considering T13 planned to be here on Monday, can more information be provided as to why he is unable to comment? Also curious as to how the case will be affected. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 03:59, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note the date and type of deletion [4] PHANTOMTECH (talk) 06:30, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Euryalus

@Euryalus: Very few who opposed brought up the age of evidence. With a quick look back at the "Recent issues" section numbers 1 and 3 are the only issues I can find that are more than a few days before the posting date, April 30th, with the oldest of all the "recent issues" points being less than a month old. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 00:40, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note - words/legal threats

I'm not sure a response to T13 is needed and I've reached my word limit so I won't be writing a response here to what T13's statement unless an arb requests I do. However, I will note that T13's response to Looie496 itself contains a legal threat (it doesn't seem to be directed at Looie496) and all these redactions are making me think there were more. PHANTOMTECH (talk) 19:03, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Technical 13

I apologize for my delay in responding, and I am drafting a response currently. I am also waiting on a response from WMF legal to an email about an issue concerning one of the arbitrators here before I post it live to this page. Doug Weller and DeltaQuad are aware of the issue, and hopefully can confirm that for me if needed. 20:27, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

PhantomTech

That's how I perceive them (unless you're saying I'm not human and therefore not allowed to have my own perceptions of things), and I'm not the only one. In that reply to FoCuSandLeArN, I also said "I have no issue with that and have found other things to do with my time to be productive."
I saw an issue and poked around on IRC (per this comment, like you said), was told by Legoktm on IRC not to worry about it since the queue had already been turned on (as I stated in that same thread the next day) and was functioning as it was expected to. It turned out it needed more poking, but I wasn't aware of that until after the changes.
What part of the canvassing policy does it violate to notify users of a script of a discussion about upcoming changes to that script that will directly impact them? I'm not aware of any such verbiage, and would be happy to comply if you can point me to it.
I offer two options near the very top of that comment after I explain why I don't do discussion on IP talk pages. Those two options were "We can discuss it on ANI (since you started the discussion there) or we can discuss it here I suppose (although I am pretty busy, so I may be very slow in responding to any comments you may make)." ANI (the hard way), or on my own talk page (the easy way). What exactly is wrong with that?
I explained my interpretation of why it wasn't a canvassing violation per WP:APPNOTE. I'll expand this to say that of the 885 users notified, 753/885 were inactive editors (85.08%) (15 are blocked – I admit I should have filtered those people out of the list, at least one came back specifically to comment on the discussion, at least 30 are now active again – didn't think to keep an exact count before I had already checked 500 of them). That means I notified 132 out of 120,034 (about 0.11%) active users. I don't consider that a lot, sorry. If someone wanted to specifically define a lot in relation to the 48,201,318 Wikipedia accounts, I'd be more than happy to respect that.
So, you admit that you dehumanized me by calling me a bot. Shame on you. My claim is that I followed the letter of policy by not using a bot. I could have very easily posted it as an RfC, but my goal wasn't "just" about the topic of a humor page. The biggest part of the goal (based on a sample of 20 random names in the list of about 1,700 that yielded a result of about 93% of people (technically 95% at 19/20, but one was real close with only one edit in a year that happened to drop them in the "active" group, so I gave only 3% for that one) using those templates being inactive (about 120 active users)) was to try to encourage some of our now retired and/or inactive editors to come back to Wikipedia and join a "fun" discussion about a silly humor page to remind them that Wikipedia is still here and try and peak their interest to come back. We kind of have declining numbers of editors, and I was hoping to poke at a few decent retired ones to get renewed interest.

Extended content

Arbitration Committee

Courcelles: You accepted based on a fact that has been determined to be false, is your position still to accept?

Final note

Since the safety of my family is not a concern to anyone here, know that I will protect my family first and ask questions later and I will record any further threats and if such threats happen will take the appropriate legal action. For those of you who commented and do not see a response to you here, I had to trim a lot of stuff to fit it all in here, please see User:Technical 13/Drafts/Response for your specific response. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 13:32, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looie496: What legal threats are those? The only statement where I use the word legal is directly to any person that threatens me or my family. There is no statement that I will be filling any lawsuits against the foundation, just the I will call the police and let them handle the criminal threatening issue. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 14:11, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Preliminary decision

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Recuse. --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 00:55, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (11/1/0/2)

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

Awaiting T13's. I am strongly leaning in the direction of accepting this. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 04:19, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Accept per Floq, Iridescent et al. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 05:52, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Waiting for response from Technical 13. GorillaWarfare (talk) 05:15, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Accept GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:54, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Waiting to see what Technical 13 has to say. Courcelles (talk) 18:45, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Noting that we have received communication indicating that Technical 13 will not be able to comment for a couple weeks. Courcelles (talk) 03:28, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In light of [5], Accept. Courcelles (talk) 01:12, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Rschen7754:, you are correct. I can confirm that the Meta userpage was not tagged for deletion, in fact, it had not been edited since January. Technical 13's last edit on Meta (live or otherwise) was on 11 May 2015. Courcelles (talk) 01:48, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Minded to accept, but I'll await Technical13's statement before arriving at a final decision. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:05, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Accept, we've given plenty of time to deal with delaying factors. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 13:46, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Someone has to present the less popular view, it may as well be me. Leaning ~~decline~~ subject to any reason why the following is invalid: from the evidence present, it appears all previous steps in dispute resolution have not been tried, because the bulk of the evidence submitted here post-dates the May 5 ANI. I agree the evidence from the past three weeks shows problematic conduct, especially the notification spam. However the May 5 ANI went nowhere because too much of the evidence was considered too old. If it was relodged with this more recent evidence as submitted here, I suspect it may get a different result. -- Euryalus (talk) 00:08, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@PhantomTech: I suppose I'm suggesting you've provided excellent evidence of disruptive conduct over the last three weeks, but this evidence doesn't seem to have previously been presented at ANI. The May 5 ANI didn't show any great enthusiasm for action, perhaps a new ANI would if this additional material was presented. Or perhaps not, in which case all previous dispute resolution having been exhausted, I'd change my view here re a case on the topic. This is of course just my view - the consensus currently seems to lean the other way so this may all be moot. -- Euryalus (talk) 01:39, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@L236:Personally, I wouldn't think it was forum shopping to open a new ANI with significantly different evidence from edits made subsequent to the previous ANI closing. An assessment of forum-shopping really depends on whether the new request is in evident good faith, or is just hounding someone over something already resolved. In my view this would be the former. But disagreement welcome. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Hammersoft: Agreed re the sentiment of your two "notes to Arbcom." First, a coherent scope is essential so T13 (and anyone else) knows what they would need to address on the case pages. Not suggesting this is abnormally difficult here, just noting it something that should/would be borne in mind in basic case administration. On the second point: People are welcome to participate in Arbcom processes in which they are named parties, and they are equally welcome not to participate and to let their editing records speak for them. Per the recent Collect case: if T13 is unavailable the Committee can still proceed but shouldn't read anything negative into his unavailability. -- Euryalus (talk) 01:50, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@L236: sure, but we're all volunteers and we all have real lives to attend to. Cases can't be delayed forever to suit everyone's convenience. But nor should we assume bad faith for extended absences. I expect people to take part in cases, and failure to do so may harm their position because they miss a chance to present their views. But I'm considerably unlikely to condem them solely because they won't or can't be there. -- Euryalus (talk) 03:30, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Previous decline reason is out of date. Still awaiting some additional material. Appropriate course may still be via motion or admin action. -- Euryalus (talk) 20:27, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I still want to wait. I'm not going to release personal information but the reason he gave made sense to me, given the time of year, so I'm going to AgF and accept it. I've been wrong before, but there's no time pressure right now since he's not editing. If I were to vote right now, which I'm not doing, it would be to decline as I agree with Euryalus. Doug Weller (talk) 09:54, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon: We aren't talking about a long wikibreak. He tells me he'll be back next weekend and I have no reason to disbelieve him. So I see no need to vote or even a suspend motion right now. Doug Weller 20:59, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Accept, sine this will need to be dealt with eventually. DGG ( talk ) 00:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Would really prefer to see T13 comment before I add anything. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 03:48, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon: I personally would not dismiss this case because of no comment. I would be preferred to do a suspend motion than to outright decline. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 16:33, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Rschen7754: Can you define a little more of the scope of the evidence you would be presenting so that Arbitrators can be aware of the general issues that are surrounding this. It would help us make a more informed decision. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 16:33, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Rschen7754: Noted, thank you. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 19:54, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

After discussion with T13 regarding individual circumstances, nothing particularly prohibits this case moving forward at this time. I'm going to go with accept and encourage other Arbs to start finding a direction for this. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 23:56, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

While I am very much leaning towards accepting this case, I would like to see Technical13's comments first. I have seen the reason he has provided to the committee for not being around for a couple of weeks, and it is both credible and convincing. If he doesn't turn up and participate within a few days of when he says he will, I will be prepared to hear a case in absentia, but I do not believe at the present time that this is a case of "ANI flu". Thryduulf (talk) 16:59, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Accept. I'm growing increasingly concerned that Technical 13 is now trying to stall for time. Based on what is presented here and in private I see no reason why the case cannot proceed at this time. Thryduulf (talk) 13:02, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accept, with similar thoughts to Thryduulf. L Faraone 22:35, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Decline. In my view the problems with this editor's conduct could be handled without ArbCom involvement. AGK [•] 12:01, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

so they could, but they won't be. That makes us not perhaps the last possible step, but the last practical step. The only alternative is yet more dispute and dissatisfaction on all sides, with our hearing it a year later. That has been the practice of some arb coms in the past, but the result was to intensify disputes, not settle them, making those arb coms worse than useless. DGG ( talk ) 16:42, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Accept In the absence of any explanation for further delay, I'm minded to hear this case without waiting for T13's comments. Yunshui ^雲 _水 08:02, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accept Roger Davies ^talk 08:35, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Accept He's put off responding too long. Doug Weller (talk) 09:03, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Temporary injunction

For the duration of this case, Technical 13 (talk · contribs) is prohibited from making any edit that is not both (a) directly relevant to the case, and (b) on one of the pages or talk pages of this case. Any comment that may constitute a personal attack or libel if posted publicly must be submitted only via email to the Arbitration Committee, and must not be posted on wiki.

If he breaches this restriction, or makes any comments deemed to be uncivil or personal attacks, he will be blocked indefinitely and may only comment on the case via email to the Arbitration Committee.

Any block may be appealed only by Technical 13 via email to the Arbitration Committee.

Passed 9 to 0 at 19:44, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Motion

All tallies are based the votes at /Proposed decision, where comments and discussion from the voting phase is also available.

This case was opened to look into the conduct of Technical 13, including a now oversighted edit he made during the request phase of this case that could have warranted an indefinite block. The case was continued to investigate the original concerns, to fully investigate the issues presented in that edit, and to consider evidence of sockpuppetry that was discovered after the case was accepted. However, as Technical 13 has indicated his desire to withdraw from the English Wikipedia, and has been given a self-requested indefinite block by Floquenbeam, this case is closed.

The indefinite block is converted to an indefinite ban imposed by the Arbitration Committee. Technical 13 may appeal this ban at any time to the Arbitration Committee if he wishes to return to editing.

Technical 13 is limited to one account, and may not edit through any account other than "Technical 13". He is explicitly denied the right to any sort of clean start.

Passed 10 to 0 at 20:50, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Final decision

All tallies are based the votes at /Proposed decision, where comments and discussion from the voting phase is also available.

Unused sections due to closure of case by motion

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Principles

Findings of fact

Remedies

All remedies that refer to a period of time (for example, a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months) are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Enforcement

Enforcement by block

0) Should any user subject to a restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year. Appeals of blocks may be made to the imposing administrator, and thereafter to arbitration enforcement, or to the Arbitration Committee. All blocks shall be logged in the appropriate section of the main case page.

Per the procedure for standardised enforcement provisions, this provision did not require a vote.

Log of blocks, bans, and restrictions

Any block, restriction, ban, or sanction performed under the authorisation of a remedy for this case must be logged in this section. Please specify the administrator, date and time, nature of sanction, and basis or context. Unless otherwise specified, the standardised enforcement provision applies to this case.

Notifications

Technical 13 indef-blocked and notified (June 26th) by Euryalus, using {{ArbComBlock}}. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 16:29, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sanctions